When Mashable asked The Post about this creepy development, they received a statement claiming it was all an accident:

"What happened was, with the recent introduction of our new article format, the button functionality at first was not supported but was able to be added back in the last few days," Kris Coratti, director of communications for The Post, told Mashable in a statement. "The button was inadvertently incorporated into the text of stories rather than on the side, which is why people thought it was new. As we work to resume our previous years-long practice, we have removed the button from stories."

Despite that, some "Buy It Now" buttons remain in the body of some articles, while others have been removed and put to the side, as was standard in WaPo past.